THE ESTIMATED VALUE OF Canada's marijuana production-up to $7 billion-exceeds its farm receipts of both cattle ($5.63 billion) and wheat ($1.73 billion), or the $4.3 billion taken in by forestry and logging. Only oil and gas extraction, worth $15.8 billion, is worth more.

CANADA'S LEGAL farm operators have net margins of 5.5%. An economist in Vancouver's Simon Fraser University figures pot growers have a 72% annual rate of return, after discounting for costs, labor, thefts and arrests.

MARIJUANA HAS BEEN CULTIVATED FOR ITS fiber since at least 8000 B.C. and used as a drug since about 2000 B.C. In Europe it was cultivated for rope, paper and cloth for centuries, with no broad understanding of the plant's psychoactive properties until the 19th century, after Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt.

"CANVAS" IS DERIVED FROM the word "cannabis." Many of the great paintings are on marijuana fibers.

HENRY VIII, AND many New World governors, mandated the growing of hemp (marijuana) for rope. Many farmers resisted because the crop paid poorly and smelled bad as it was curing.

THC IS CONCEN-trated in marijuana's trichomes, which are tiny stalked glands with a stem and a ball-like tip, clustered around the flowers of an unfertilized female plant.

ACCORDING TO A 1999 study by the Institute of Medicine, marijuana addicts 9% of its users. Alcohol addicts 15% of users, heroin, 23% of users, and tobacco, 32% of users.

ONE MARIJUANA cigarette deposits four to five times more tar in the
lungs than a tobacco cigarette. Thus, smoking three or four joints is like smoking up to a pack of cigarettes.

MARIJUANA WAS EFFECTIVELY OUTLAWED in the U.S. with the passage of the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act. There are now an estimated 500,000 marijuana arrests
in the U.S. each year.

THE MOST RIGOROUS SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE of medical benefits from marijuana use centers on ameliorating the negative effects of cancer chemotherapy, appetite loss associated with AIDS, and to a lesser extent, pain management, multiple sclerosis and glaucoma. As a medicine it is considered limited by the side effect of intoxication.

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